Great Perfection

The Essence of Great Perfection Practice

~ DudjomTersarNgondro

“O sir, the essence of Great Perfection practice is this:
All phenomena of samsara and enlightenment are only your own mind’s magical display. Primordially, your mind’s nature lacks substantiality;
It is unconditioned empty luminosity, the essential nature of awareness. It dwells primordially and eternally as dharmakaya’s essence. Yet not recognizing your own nature, transitory dualistic clinging creates delusion,
deceptive attachment to perceptions of happiness and suffering in samsara and enlightenment. In fact, your mind’s nature transcends the bounds of good and evil, hope and fear. In this space of great emptiness, free from transition and change, self-manifest awareness is present knowing. This relaxed settling in the uncontrived natural state is the view, and is also the key to meditation. When meditating, as soon as thoughts arise from awareness’s dynamic energy, use mindfulness to identify them: Self-arising, self-liberating, like waves on water. Recognize them as such and let them go without prolongation. “Meditation” is just the meager term we use to designate this. Continuously maintain boundless conduct free of action. Discard the six collections of consciousness; leave them as they are, without fixation. Do not hope for a result at a later time. It is in the present itself: reaching the unassailable state, attainment of self-mastery.

I, Jigdral Yeshe Dorje, wrote this, corresponding to the request of Ngawang Zopa. May this virtue become the cause for simultaneous realization and liberation!”

— Wisdom Nectar: Dudjom Rinpoche’s Heart Advice by Dudjom Rinpoche

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t be partial

~ DudjomTersarNgondro
Lama Tharchin Rinpoche

. . . I would like to give you some advice: Don’t be partial. What I mean is don’t hold the highest view of Great Perfection, Dzogchen, and ignore other forms of practice. When it comes to practice, there is no higher or lower. It’s how you practice that makes the difference. That’s why it’s not right to hold to the Dzogchen view just in your intellectual mind. You must feel it positively, with devotion and appreciation for the qualities of the Three Jewels. You must also feel deeply about the suffering of all sentient beings due to ignorance. This is compassion. Then you must realize the true nature of your mind. That’s wisdom. Without compassion and wisdom, Dzogchen is merely intellectual. It is absolutely crucial that you integrate with everything. Then there will be an ultimate benefit.

The best way to do this is with ngondro, the preliminary practice, especially the Guru Yoga section. If you complete each ngondro a 100,000 times, that’s good. But at least do ngondro every day. Begin with contemplating the profoundness of the Four Thoughts. Then take Refuge with devotion, generate Bodhicitta with compassion, offer Mandala with generosity, and practice. Vajrasatta with genuine regret. Then, when you come to Guru Yoga, feel your genuine devotion, recite the mantra, and receive the empowerments. Then again generate devotion that is so powerful that it melts Guru Rinpoche as long as possible. After the session, maintain pure vision ~ yourself as Vajrayogini and all forms, sounds, and thoughts inseparable from Guru Rinpoche’s body, speech, and mind. Then, keeping that frame of reference, do whatever you have to do.

I am asking you from the bottom of my heart that you practice this every day. It doesn’t matter for how long. Just until you have a feeling of satisfaction in your heart. That is enough. Make your session pure, strong, and undistracted. Short sessions are very helpful because you make progress through the power of habituation. Practicing like this will support your realization of the Great Perfection of Dzogchen, and then little by little, you will be able to carry your view with you at all times into your life activities that will become buddha activities.

The positive circumstances we have together right now we are no accident. We planned for this is past lives. I pray that in this lifetime and all future lifetimes that we will continue to turn the Wheel of Dharma together. The foundation of all our activities is keeping pure samaya and creating a perfect wisdom mandala. Whoever participates in this, their merit will remove unwanted circumstances and their fortune will increase. Whatever we do, we should dedicate it to all sentient beings and plant the seeds of their enlightenment.

~ Lama Tharchin Rinpoche
Lotus Light Newsletter
October/November 1998
Volume 5, No 4

The Profound Preliminary Practice

~ DudjomTersarNgondro

The actual purification of your nature: the ordinary aspects are the four changes of mind; the extraordinary ones are the refuge, generation of Bodhicitta, purification of obscurations, and the two accumulations. Having practiced each of these assiduously according to the commentaries until you have truly experienced them, you should then consider the most extraordinary Guru Yoga, as the vital essence of practice, and persevere in it.* If you do not, growth of meditation will be tardy; and even if it grows a little it will be very vulnerable to obstacles and genuine understanding will not be able to take birth in your being.

So, if you pray with simple and very fervent devotion, after some time, through the transfer of the Heart-Mind realization of the Guru, and extraordinary understanding, inexpressible in words, will certainly take birth within. As Lama Shang Rinpoche said:

“To nurture stillness, experiences, deep concentration – these are common things.
But very rare is the realization born from within through the Guru’s blessings, which arise by the power of enthusiastic faith.”

Therefore, the birth of understanding in your nature of the meaning of the Great Perfection depends upon these preliminaries. That was what Je-Drigung meant when he said:

“Other teachings consider the main practice profound, but here it is the preliminary practices that we consider profound.”

* The four changes of mind arise from the contemplation of the preciousness and rarity of the human body, of the impermanence of all things, of the ineluctable law of cause and effect and of the imperfections and sufferings of Samsara. The Guru Yoga of Lamai Nal-jor, literally union with the Guru’s nature, is not only the essence of the preliminaries but also of all practices.

Extracting the Quintessence of Accomplishment  ~ pages 5-6
by Jigdral Yeshe Dorje
Translated according to the golden explanations of  Tulku Thondup Rinpoche,
Dungsey Trinley Norbu Rinpoche, and Taklung Tsetrul Rinpoche,
and with the kind assistance of many vajra brothers and sisters.
Originally published in 1979 by Orgyan Kunsang Chökhorling
Reprinted in 1998 by Vajrayana Foundation